Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a processing apparatus, a method for controlling the processing apparatus, and a storage medium.
Description of the Related Art
In recent years, there has been demand to reduce power consumption of office equipment from the viewpoint of environmental protection. To achieve reduction of power consumption, a technique is known for putting office equipment such as a copier into a power saving mode in which power supply to resources (printing unit, reading unit, display unit, control unit, and the like) in the equipment is stopped when a standby state in which the equipment remains idle continues for a predetermined period of time.
A multifunction peripheral (multifunction processing apparatus) having plural functions including a copy function, printer function, and scanner function is equipped with various functions (periodic processes) which operate periodically. When executing these periodic processes, even if the multifunction peripheral is operating in power saving mode, the multifunction peripheral returns to normal operation mode for these processes. Consequently, there is a problem in that when the number of these periodic processes increases, the time period in which the multifunction peripheral operates in power saving mode is reduced, making it impossible to achieve reduction of power consumption.
For example, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2006-41971 describes a method for removing factors which obstruct such reduction of power consumption. The method stores a start time and execution cycle of a first periodic process, and when a start time and execution cycle of a second periodic process is set, the method brings a start time of the second periodic process into coincidence with the start time of the first periodic process.
According to the invention described in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2006-41971, by bringing the first start time of the second periodic process into coincidence with the next start time of the first periodic process, it is possible to prevent the operation mode of the multifunction peripheral from returning to a normal mode when the second periodic process is started. However, if the execution cycles of the first periodic process and second periodic process do not match, the second and subsequent start times of the first and second periodic processes do not coincide with each other, increasing the number of returns to normal operation mode and thereby obstructing reduction of power consumption.